"Democracy and the Welfare State," Alice Kessler-Harris and Maurizio Vaudagna

November 21, 2017

Alice Kessler-Harris, R. Gordon Hoxie Professor Emerita of American History in Honor of Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Maurizio Vaudagna are co-editors of Democracy and the Welfare State, published October 2017 by Columbia University Press.

From the Publisher: 

"In this book, leading historians and social scientists rethink the history of social democracy and the welfare state in the United States and Europe in light of the global transformations of the economic order. Separately and together, they ask how changes in the distribution of wealth reshape the meaning of citizenship in a post-welfare-state era. They explore how the harsh effects of austerity and inequality influence democratic participation. In individual essays as well as interviews with Ira Katznelson and Frances Fox Piven, contributors from both sides of the Atlantic explore the fortunes of the welfare state. They discuss distinct national and international settings, speaking to both local particularities and transnational and transatlantic exchanges. Covering a range of topics—the lives of migrant workers, gender and the family in the design of welfare policies, the fate of the European Union, and the prospects of social movements—Democracy and the Welfare State is essential reading on what remains of twentieth-century social democracy amid the onslaught of neoliberalism and right-wing populism and where this legacy may yet lead us."

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